What’s So Great About Squarespace, Anyway?
If you’re on the fence or considering moving your Wordpress website to Squarespace, I’ve outlined the pros and cons of each platform to help guide your decision.
As of this writing, I’ve been building websites for 25+ years. On a variety of platforms and languages, starting with .html, .aspx, .php, and onto Wordpress, Shopify, and Squarespace. Most of that time was exclusively Wordpress, where I learned soooo much about the open-source platform, and many bells and whistles (ahem, server-side additions) that went with it to create websites that different clients needed, for dozens/hundreds of different needs, functions, and end goals.
After 200+ websites built, rebuilt, and redesigned over the years, I have finally found my true love CMS platform: Squarespace.
Squarespace Evolution
I dabbled off and on with Squarespace over the course of 10-12 years, and never found it to be as designer-friendly as I’d like - always seemed too limited. But in 2019, when I decided to give it a solid effort while creating a website for my small farm, I went all in. Squarespace had come a loooong way over the years, and I was sold on its ease of use, no-brainer editing and page structure ability, and best of all: no. more. server. finagling.
Granted, there are websites that will need more than what Squarespace can do, and that’s great, but for myself - and the type of clients I serve, Squarespace is enough, and often more than enough to get the job done, get found online, be accessible to all, look great doing it, and super easy to manage.
Comparisons
The most important areas of platform comparisons below are based on my own clients, past and present, who typically do not have extremely large databases of content, 1,000-product stores, nor 100,000 hits of daily traffic. They are typical small businesses, non-profits, and personal brands whose online presence is either on Wordpress or Squarespace.
Comparing Squarespace vs. Wordpress
1) Flexibility
Squarespace — Not quite as flexible as Wordpress, with less coding opportunities overall, but again, with a professional designer, it can look/function the way you want it to, sometimes with added plugins - just like Wordpress.
Wordpress — Because Wordpress is open source, it has almost unlimited flexibility. Wordpress can be customized into whatever you want, especially with a professional designer, programmer, or agency that knows how to custom code it.
WINNER: Depends on your site building prowess. Squarespace is much simpler from the get-go.
2) Security & Updating
Squarespace — Squarespace provides all server-side work, including updating, security, backups, firewalls, SSL certificates, etc. You don’t need to pay for server extras - its all included. Unlike Wordpress, which requires constant and consistent updating of all peripherals: the theme, plugins, Wordpress framework, SSL certificates their annual and renewals, backups, firewalls, etc etc etc, which usually have additional costs attached. On Squarespace - its DFY (Done For You)
Wordpress — Prone to security issues and alerts, malware, and hacking if you’re not maintaining and updating the theme, plugins, and Wordpress framework as required. If you don’t update, plugins begin to degrade and not keep up with evolving upgrades from other plugins, the theme, or even worse, Wordpress itself 😱
WINNER: Squarespace
3) Cost
Squarepace — At an average of less than $300 per year, you get hosting, your domain, and SSL certificate plus security, staging site, and 24/7 support. No extra ‘backups’, ‘firewalls’, domain ‘protection’, or any of the myriad ‘upgrades’ that hosting services want to charge you for deploying Wordpress. If you don’t build the site yourself and hire a designer, that is of course additional, but the nuts and bolts of just having a website are a one-stop shop on Squarespace.
Wordpress — In addition to hiring a designer or agency to build your website, you’ll be paying for hosting (anywhere from $7mo for a cheap-o slow server to $1000mo or more for a major e-commerce site), plus SSL certificates, backups, additional staging sites, firewalls, security, malware cleanup, plus plus plus virtually anything else you need/want for your website to function.
WINNER: Squarespace
4) Editing
Squarespace — Extremely easy to edit pages, styles, blogs, SEO, whatever. Very intuitive and a snap to learn. Great free video tutorials at Squarespace.com.
Wordpress — Depending on the backend editor for the theme, many editor plugins can be difficult to not only learn the ropes, but overall be hard to use. You would need to invest a bit of time or money, usually both, to figure it out AND be inclined and excited to go in and make edits on the regular.
WINNER: Squarespace
5) Support
Squarespace — Free dedicated support team available 24/7 with an indispensible free resource and video tutorials hub.
Wordpress — There’s no one answering the phone or responding to email at ‘Wordpress.org’. But there are literally millions of free articles, hubs, and knowledge bases to suss out any problem that you run into - because someone else had that issue, too. Unless you are fluent in geek-speak or you have the scratch to hire the designer who built your site to fix and/or maintain it, (or your host offers a troubleshooting package) you’ll have to hunt and peck for how-to’s on your own.
WINNER: Squarespace
6) E-Commerce
Some will argue with me here, but unless you are selling digital products, like PDF downloads, courses, membership areas, or dropship items from a fulfillment service (think Printful, ThePrintSpace) — anything that accepts payments — the best bet for e-commerce and selling things isn’t Wordpress nor Squarespace…at least not without lots of integrations…
Its Shopify.
